to keep the wind from touching him at night. The man had stopped plucking berries, his purple-stained fingers poised in midpluck, as the dragon ship landed and the figure emerged. The whole sequence had taken almost ten minutes, from when the man had first noticed Tiamat as she gracefully came to rest, barely making a sound beyond the displacement of the air left in her wake, to now, when the aperture had appeared on the dragon ship’s face and the golden figure of Anu had emerged to stride majestically down the tongue that rolled before him to touch the soil. In all that time, the man—we might call him Adam, although that is not the name which Anu gave him—remained in place, unmoving, perhaps unable to move, as he watched an occurrence play out that was so far beyond his comprehension that he could barely fathom it. It was like hearing something in a foreign language, so impossible was it for Adam to interpret.
As Anu stepped onto the planet, Adam coughed, suddenly choking on his own breath, the taste of berries and stomach acid flooding his throat with a hot surge. He doubled over, taking great racking gasps of air as he tried to clear his throat, pressing his arms against his chest and sides, the berries crushed and forgotten. It was shock, seeing this creature from another world, this...god...?
When Adam finally managed to draw a breath without coughing—still hunched over like the apes his kind still resembled—he stared at the ground between his feet and saw golden, clawed toes. He looked up, turning his head slowly, still feeling that twitch on his insides where the choking cough threatened to restart.
The creature from the stars was standing beside him, legs widespread, cloak fluttering in the light, warm breeze, watching him with eyes as dark as newly spilled blood.
Anu spoke in a voice the like of which had never been heard on this planet. The words were incomprehensible to the apekin, but the sound fascinated him. It was duotonal, like someone humming against a sheet of paper, split and yet conjoined, a sound that was two sounds at once. The voice, like everything else about the Annunaki, was multidimensional.
Adam heard the sound and did the only thing that seemed natural: he fell to his knees, bowing down before Anu, peering up at those eyes like blood.
Anu peered down at the apekin creature inquisitively, pleased with this new aspect of the thing’s nature. “You are not timid, then?” he said. He spoke the words in his own tongue; they left his mouth with a sound like wind through autumn leaves. He reached down then, touching one golden hand to the apekin’s head, pressing it gently against the top of the primitive creature’s skull. Anu placed just a little pressure there, and the apekin bowed his head, until he was staring at the ground between Anu’s feet.
“Better,” Anu declared, a thin smile appearing on his wide mouth.
The apekin remained in that aspect as Anu surveyed the lands around him, taking in the new plants, the trees, the texture of the air. Here was a playground that might stave off the crushing boredom of life eternal, at least for a while. He breathed deeply of the air, consuming it through the flat, flared nostrils that resided on his face like the craters of some unknown moon, as he turned back to regard the apekin bowed low before him. This was something he could use and could get used to. These hairy mammals with their smells and their finite life spans could serve to reignite the pleasure centers of the bored Annunaki.
But when to share his discovery? Anu wondered. Perhaps tomorrow or next week or in a thousand years’ time. For time meant little to a race that knew infinity and resided outside of its wide borders. First he would experiment a little, see what these apekin were capable of, and what they could endure.
“Come, creature,” Anu said, placing a clawed hand under the apekin’s chin until his head tilted to look at his new master. “Creature. Creature. No, you need an identifier, a name by which you may be referred.” Anu was already thinking of the Annunaki’s slave class, the Igigi, none of whom had ever earned a name. They were devoted and simple creatures, superior, Anu suspected, to the apekin prostrating himself before him, but still uncomplicated compared to the Annunaki. It pleased Anu to think that by naming this first man, he might further subjugate the Igigi, reminding them of their status as slaves to the eternal race. And so he spoke a name, one that would survive throughout man’s history. Not Adam, not that—but Cain.
* * *
THE DOME SAT on the shores of Lake Tiamat. It was four hundred yards across and perfectly round as if a giant sphere had been buried in the ground, leaving only its top third visible. The shell of the Dome was colored the silver of clouds, making it almost indistinguishable from the sky into which it towered. Inside, Anu conducted his trials. He was loath to call them experiments; they were really just games that put the local apekin through their paces, testing them to—and beyond—their limits. Anu might be excused the latter—he had no prior knowledge of the apekin, and only by testing them could he hope to determine where their limits were and of what merit such limits were.
The apekin needed sleep and food, far more so than the Annunaki, who could go without such things for months, even years, at a time. The Annunaki lived outside of time, while the apekin were bound to it in such a way that it afflicted them with a disease called aging.
Aging. The Annunaki had bypassed that millennia ago, their bodies immune to the ravages of time, their minds playing host to the memories of all of their race, perfectly held for instantaneous recall. And more, they had invested in the genetic shunt, a download of personality which allowed them to be reborn as they were, over and over, to regenerate their minds into new forms, each genetic template held safe in the wombship, Tiamat.
Anu had spent the past six months on Earth, toying with the apekin and the other creatures who existed on this untouched paradise. He had tested diseases, manipulated DNA, made the apekin serve him, service him and entertain him. He had driven them to madness and to death, called upon them to fight with wild creatures for his pleasure and to fight with one another to the death. He had made mazes and traps to test their intelligence, used mirrors and refraction to throw their senses. Simple tricks all, but tricks that were beyond the apekin’s understanding.
But the apekin were learning; that was something of which they were eminently capable, Anu had concluded. They took observations from the trials, learned lessons, reached conclusions that made them better at surviving without injury. If they could learn, Anu concluded, then they could be taught.
Cain had survived all of the trials. Anu’s first test subject, Cain had proved shrewd and wily, and he had learned quickly how to please his master and never to trust him. Cain was strong, muscular for his species. He could kill a man with his bare hands and utilize simple tools that he fashioned himself—shaped rocks, carved sticks. Cain showed the kind of spirit that Anu associated with the eternal, a spirit that might live beyond his time here on Ki, on Earth. Anu had found one other like him, a female of remarkable intellect for an apekin, and there seemed to be a bond between her and Cain almost from the moment that they met.
Cain was a servant of Anu, which meant he had safety in the Dome, safety from those prowling saber-toothed tigers and their ilk, each one looking for a hot meal that was slow on its feet and wouldn’t fight back. Cain was safe inside, and so he served Anu without complaint. Every morning he would run the circumference of Lake Tiamat, an artificial body of water created from the overspill of Tiamat’s tanks, genetic ooze, waste product expelled after the long journey across the field of stars. The dragon ship resided beside the lake, disgorging her innards in a display of regeneration comparable to anything Annunaki, her fish-scale skin slowly replenishing where it had become blistered by the heat of atmospheric entry.
Cain seemed to have some ragged notion linking survival to physical prowess, and so, Anu guessed, that was why he ran. He tried to teach the female, the one of remarkable intellect, and she watched him run the circuits around the lake with bright eyes of emerald green.
*
